The Home of Australian Craft Beer

New Beers

Barely a day goes by without another seasonal or one-off special flying out of an Australian brewery (if not ten). Here and in our weekly newsletter, we'll bring you news and, if we've sampled them, our take on as many of them as possible. Happy hunting!

Tapped November 28th, 2018

The Beerfarm is celebrating its third birthday with a couple of doubles in the shape of supersized versions of its most popular beers. It’s a confident move to play around with the India Pale Lager (IPL) in particular, given it's a beer that arrived as an instant classic, however, the beerfarmers do like a party and there is a lot to celebrate.
Although still light on its feet, the IPL arrives with more weight and alcohol sweetness than the original. This seems obvious given the light malt body,…
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Tapped November 28th, 2018

The irony about this Experimental Series release from Otherside is that, while it stretches the notion of what beer can be in true experimental fashion, the name tells you everything you need to know – it actually couldn’t be more transparent with the throbbing head rush of saccharine vanilla and raspberry, a combination that’s fuelled equal amounts of children’s glee and parents' concern.
In its beerified format, the immediate sugar rush is palpable, while the romance of flavours plays out…
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Tapped November 27th, 2018

As December fast approaches, Tallboy & Moose is ready to hit you with another four new beers, all of which are worthy of being enjoyed in the sun. The Noodler (4.7 percent ABV), is an American wheat beer brewed for the fifth birthday of one of Fitzroy’s top craft beer haunts, The Catfish. Taking its name from a difficult-to-believe-is-real pastime in America’s South, where bare hands are used to capture live catfish, it’s a beer designed for a long day on the lake, one to keep you hydrated…
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Tapped November 27th, 2018

Each year for the past three years, the Brewhouse Margaret River crew has held a Backyard Brewing Tournament, inviting amateurs to enter a beer in the hope of being voted the best and seeing their creation scaled up to a full batch brew. In 2018, the winner is Scott Butson, with the winning beer a hefeweizen with a great family backstory.
The beer's creation started out when Scott travelled to the Alps in Northern Italy in 2006 and met up with his father-in-law Gerhard Fischer in the city of Bolzano.…
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Tapped November 27th, 2018

For their final nationwide new release of 2018 Modus Operandi hasn’t delivered a showstopper. At least not in a knockout punch / injury time field goal / fireworks at the end of a concert way. Tropical Haze is more a case of subtle envelopment, where you don’t necessarily know you’ve been got ’til they have you. And it’s part of a longer journey.
The beer itself is a five percent ABV pale ale (remember those?) rather than the almost-anticipated big, hazy IPA. Yes, it’s still got a boatload…
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Tapped November 27th, 2018

A tipping point has arrived at Otherside. For the past 18 months, their brewery has come together and, as the brewers have got to grip with it, the momentum gathered through a steady stream of beers is becoming instead a torrent of releases through Otherside’s various handles. The latest in the Pilot Series is a tropically inspired pale ale and, although it’s a limited release, one imagines this could very well end up in the core range.
Pouring golden and with a subtle orange-tinged haze, Break…
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Golden

Style

Pale Ale

ABV

5.0%

Stockists

Available in limited release from the brewery & select WA retailers and venues

Tapped November 26th, 2018

However you approach beer, you'll typically find the deeper you dig, the more avenues you find to follow. Whether that’s exploring beer history or the science of brewing, it appears you can never know too much. Even within seemingly tight style categories, there’s often plenty of wriggle room. So, while this beer from Molly Rose’s second Foundation Series pack is technically a Brett saison like the brewing company’s only regularly brewed beer to date – Matilde – it’s a pretty different…
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Tapped November 26th, 2018

The North Street sub-brand at Mountain Goat started out as the name for a delightful pale ale initially only available at the brewery that evolved into the lower ABV beer now widely available as, simply, Pale Ale. In its wake has come a series of beers that start out on tap at the Richmond HQ and, in some cases, like the IPA and now this Gose, graduate to a wider bottled release.
While the name gives little away, there’s more than a straightforward soured and salted wheat beer here. The brewers…
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Tapped November 26th, 2018

Old Man Yells At Cloud has been a runaway success for Old Wives Ales, with the beer’s big, tropical notes and celeber reference to The Simpsons helping the NEIPA stand out in a field of many. As such beers have taken off, plenty of sub-styles have arisen, with bigger and boozier double NEIPAs appearing with greater regularity through 2018.
The brewers at Old Wives Ales are the latest to make a beer that fits into that world and, though there are plenty out there that might still deride the haze…
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Tapped November 23rd, 2018

Boatrocker is best known these days for its Belgian style ales, big, malty beasts and fruity blends. Yet it started out with the hop driven, yet still malty, Alpha Queen and has always had the odd pale ale and IPA floating around its core range over the years. And thus it is that the fourth Boatrocker beer to go into cans is a new IPA.
If you ignore NEIPAs and Brut IPAs, longer term trends in the world of IPAs have seen a move towards leaner, more tropical fruit salad style IPAs, but, as the brewery…
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Tapped November 22nd, 2018

As they suggested in our feature on the rise of mid-strengths within the craft beer world, there’s been a gradually dawning realisation at Little Bang that it pays to have something lower in alcohol pouring at your brewery these days. That led to the development of Little Bang, a “super session ale” weighing in a just 3 percent ABV but with the bite of something rather bigger.
It’s very pale, with just a little haze, and, for the most part, looks to give the drinker what they’d find in…
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Tapped November 22nd, 2018

Given the success of the Blood Orange New England Rye IPA (or BONER for short), it’s perhaps little surprise the brewers at Dainton keeping playing in the NEIPA arena. Here, they plunder Frosty Fruits for inspiration, albeit changing the name enough and avoiding any aping of the ice lolly’s packaging to stay away from prying eyes.
The tropical IPA is opaque as you like, as if someone has melted ice cream into the fermenter, and serves up lovely fruit juice aromas, a brekkie juice prickle and…
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Tapped November 22nd, 2018

In a meeting of minds, Jayne Lewis from Two Birds and Hamish Coates from Rocky Ridge wanted to celebrate her pre-beer, West Australian winemaking background with a release timed for WA Beer Week. After settling on a sour beer, seasonal serendipity struck as the mature elderflower tree behind Rocky Ridge’s small bar, Darleen's, was in full bloom, with the resultant onsite hand-picking of the delicate flowers extending the brewery’s normal terroir 15 kilometres beyond the farm gates.
Beginning…
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Pale Yellow

Style

Elderflower Sour

ABV

4.7%

Stockists

Available now from Darleen’s and select WA venues before heading to Two Birds Nest

Tapped November 22nd, 2018

In the early days of his Ocho adventure, Stu Grant spoke of plans to release a series of saisons, something that had the avowed saison freaks at Crafty Towers rather happy. Since then, while some have followed, he’s also diversified, with a seasonal IPA series and many other one-offs occupying much of the release schedule. But, in late spring 2018, a couple of very different saisons have left the Tassie haunt he occupies with Van Dieman.
One is the second Imaginary Ale release – and there’s…
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Tapped November 21st, 2018

Building on the success of last year’s Frosty Fruits, the WA collaborators behind it were keen not to repeat themselves. Loosely starting with the same "Summer Sour" concept, this iteration from Cheeky Monkey, Chi Cho Gelato and Mane Liquor arrived at an untested combination of yuzu and blueberry as a result of the consistently unique offerings from the gelato artisans. From this point, Cheeky Monkey’s sales manager Brendan Day, ignoring requests for more restrained fruit levels requested…
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Tapped November 20th, 2018

It’s a nice thing to have nice neighbours. The Grifter Brewing Company and The Henson are neighbours and they’re both nice. So they’ve made a beer together and it’s nice too.
What they’ve made, specifically, is a very, very hazy New England IPA. It looks filthy, but it tastes the way sunshine feels on a winter day. Not summer sun, because summer sun is intense. This is a little gentler, more subdued. There are hops, of course, in lavish doses, and they serve up their tropical fruit character…
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Tapped November 20th, 2018

Olfaction carries a unique kind of nostalgic magic. None of our other senses are so quick to flash us back to a specific memory in the long distant past; voyages in grandma’s wardrobe, the torment of a childhood medicine, the school-era aroma of pencil shavings and a new eraser.
This was the ensuing train of thought having been poured a can of Endeavour’s new Citrus Pale Ale to be met with an aroma not encountered for nigh on two decades: the smell of Fanta. It’s a rampant flourish of sweet…
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Tapped November 20th, 2018

There’s a Fawlty Towers-esque “Don’t mention the war!” element underpinning this release from the Endeavour Tap Rooms. Specifically: “Don’t mention the Dunkel!”.
This beer, according to most style guidelines, would be classed a Dunkelweizen but of course they wouldn’t dare call it that because who actually knows what that is or would buy one unless they were lingering alone and confused in some Bavarian beer hall? “Dark Wheat” seems far less foreign and terrifying so that’s…
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Tapped November 16th, 2018

It was a joyous occasion: Kate and Simon had just welcomed their first son, Alvin, into the world; they were over the moon. Anyone who has experienced a newborn can attest to the fact that sleep is hard to come by, especially in the first few weeks, and the idea of feeling even remotely human has to be put on hiatus. However, the show must go on and that is exactly what Simon did – after very little sleep.
His intentions when he got to work were to brew Smiling Samoyed's American pale ale, 12…
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Tapped November 16th, 2018

Striking up friendships in the modern world of business is extremely important and that is exactly what Smiling Samoyed has done with Adelaide CBD venue, The Griffins Hotel. To celebrate their love for each other, the two companies have teamed up for the first of many collaboration beers. Shamouti Stout is a 7 percent ABV chocolate oatmeal stout brewed with orange zest and tropical hops.
As for the name, Shamouti is a type of orange also known as the Jaffa, which helps make sense of the beer. Pouring…
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The Crafty Pint is an independent online magazine and resource for anyone interested in craft beer in Australia. We bring an honest, old-fashioned journalistic approach to beer's brave new world, telling stories because they're worth telling not because someone is paying us to write them.

Like many of the people who have changed the face of beer in Australia, we believe in authenticity, integrity, enjoyment and love. We hope to play a role in helping good beer, brewed by good people, find its way into the hands of more drinkers.